And yet the hero's dream has indeed produced staggeringly powerful hero's. These outliers tend to be light years ahead of their non-hero peers. The paypal Mafia (Musk, Thiel, etc), Bezos, Gates, Zuckerberg, Brin, Page, Jobs...

The US is a couple of education reforms away from being a hero generating lottery to a hero generating machine. Also the fact that China is pretty much closed to foreign outside heros ever getting a chance.